For this post (and possibly the next few), I’d like to wax poetic about my courses. There are a lot of wonderful things offered at Tufts, and I’m excited to talk about the four I’m taking this semester. For now, I’ll start with my favorite: JPN 191, or “The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki.” Yep. You read that correctly. I’m taking a seminar on Hayao Miyazaki for credit and I love it.
When I was a freshman, I took a class on Japanese Animation and Narration with professor Susan Napier. The class was an advising class open to students of all ages as well, so I got to know my peers in my advising, as well as sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The material was fun and though the readings were hard, I was able to write a well-received paper at the end of the course. Last spring when I was hunting for courses for the fall, I remembered that course and seeing that I had a fifth slot to fill, and I checked out the Japanese department. That’s when I found this gem.
There was a moment of panic when Professor Napier said she might be going to Japan for the year, then another when I realized that the course’s film screenings on Sunday evening were during the same time as my sorority’s chapter meetings, but when I emailed my professor about it, she was more than happy to let me watch the films on my own, offering to let me borrow them from her personal collection. So Operation: Miyazaki was officially a go.
So that’s what I do with my Sunday nights. While others are doing readings, I’m watching Miyazaki movies, then doing readings. I love being able to read scholarly literature about the films that I grew up on, so the readings aren’t really a chore. For a normal class, we’ll have a good size chunk of readings, and we meet in person to discuss the recurring and new themes of the movies, as well as some of their influences and derivative works, and we take special care to pay attention to Miyazaki as a world builder. We watch all of his movies in chronological order, starting with Castle of Cagliostro, then moving on to Nausicaa, Laputa, Totoro, Kiki, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and for this week, Spirited Away.
Now, this class is a seminar, which means that it’s a class of only 12, and that there’s a pretty big (~25 page) paper due at the end. This is daunting, but I know I can do it. I’ve already got my topic picked out: I’m going to bring in material from one of my other classes, Theories and Methods of Art History, and look at Miyazaki as an artist with his own particular habits by using the theories of connoisseurship.
Using art theory to look at film does have its problems, but I’m excited to see where this takes me. I’m in the research stage now, but it’ll be worth it when I get a strong start on my paper! Until then, I’m off to finish my reading for the class and then snuggle into bed, heated blanket and all, and watch “Spirited Away.”